In what follows I am going to argue that the rise of the creative industries has in general been understood too narrowly. This narrow understanding has had implications for the way that a politics of management and labour in the creative industries has been framed and contained, and it has held back an analysis of class struggle in the creative industries. To elaborate an understanding of labour in the creative industries I am going to revisit some insights related to the development of British cultural studies, and try to link these insights to what Stuart Hall calls the conditions of possibility for the creative industries today (1973/1980). These conditions of possibility require a different conception of labour, infusing the circuits of production in what Italian post-workerist theorists call the social factory. Such an elaboration of the work of culture allows us to reframe the questions of labour struggle and management control in the creative industries. The method of this article will of necessity be somewhat speculative and its scope broad, but where possible I will try to give examples of what I mean in order to focus on the possibilities for developing a politics of labour under the expanded conditions considered here.